Hold on to your petrol guzzler, electric cars aren’t there yet

By Incorrect Author• 15 December 2009

Don’t unplug the battery of your old vehicle hoping to put it in the garage for posterity just yet. The next generation of hybrid cars is decades away from being a common reality, says new research from the US department of energy. The study says the next generation of plug-in hybrids might need hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies. So, you have to ask, where’s that money coming from in such depressed markets? It also appears that such vehicles won’t have a significant impact on US oil consumption or carbon emissions before 2030. Toyota is a leader in this game, but bankruptcy-ridden General Motors is also developing plug-in hybrid models to gain back some market share. Toyota says it will sell tens of thousands of plug-in hybrid Priuses within the next two years. But that’s not the millions upon millions of annual sales the world needs.
Read more: The New York Times